The First Wives Club (60 page)

In individual Plexiglas cases sat mounds of excrement. Enough to have come from every sentient being on the planet, he first thought. With great effort, he isolated some of the descriptive labels, From Shorty Jackson, Death Row, Sing Sing Prison, a woman who had skied with the Pope attested to the authenticity of another specimen, monkey ca-ca, doggie-do, a major dump from someone at the Pentagon, and—the chef d’oeuvre-Phoebe’s own. Mounds of it. Heaps of it. Oh, Jesus. Oh dear, sweet Jesus Christ.

Bill slumped against the wall for support, perspiration beading on his forehead. He closed his eyes to shut out the sight, but couldn’t escape the smells. Phoebe was chattering on, unaware of Bill’s repugnance. “Art is creation in its simplest form,” Phoebe was saying.

As drunk as Bill had been on leaving the ball, he became immediately sober and felt as if he were seeing life as it really was for the first time. Phoebe had gone over the edge. His love, his soul mate, was losing her mind. He couldn’t let this happen, he needed her. It took all his powers of control to gently lead her back downstairs to the car and home.

Phoebe’s entrance into the apartment on their return home seemed to give her new energy. She ran from room to room calling for her dog.

She hadn’t had a dog since childhood, he knew, but he let her run herself down, hoping that she would exhaust herself into sleep. He needed quiet, he needed to think.

Phoebe finally sat on his lap and asked him to read her a story. He agreed and she presented him with the Story of O and curled up into him like a little girl who was being read Where the Wild Things Are. Bill knew he had no choice. He began to read to his little girl, her head resting lightly on his shoulder.

It took until six o’clock in the morning, but Phoebe was at last finally asleep, thanks to the Valium he found stashed in her bedside drawer. Bill, exhausted, did a line of coke and called Dr. Rosen at her home. After being reasonably assured that she was awake enough to understand, he told her of his discovery of Phoebe’s latest art medium and self-expression. Leslie seemed not the least surprised. Or concerned.

“Bill, Phoebe has to express her unconscious in her art. This is a wonderful breakthrough for her. She’s finally getting in touch with a very traumatic period of her life.”

“For chrissake, Leslie.” Bill had no patience for this psychobabble now. “She’s doing cocaine, Valium, and vodka like a kid locked in a candy store. She’s babbling, making a spectacle.

She’s killing herself.”

“That’s only a symptom of a deeper underlying disorder, Bill. There’s a very important issue at play here.” She paused. “Since you’re almost her husband, I think you should know what it is that Phoebe is struggling with.” Again she paused, this time to find the right words.

‘Phoebe had been anally violated repeatedly as a young child by her maternal grandfather.”

Bill flopped into a chair. His stomach heaved. Those scenes, those debauched anal scenes between them. Whose part had he been playing?

“What? What are you telling me? Malcolm Phipps, the steel tycoon, was fucking his little grandchild up the ass in a household of at least twenty people in residence? That’s crazy.”

“It’s the truth, Bill. I’m sorry to have to break it to you this way.

But it is the truth. And it’s very important now that you give her permission to act out, to express herself in any way she chooses.

Without validation, she could indeed decompensate. There could be a major paranoid incident. I know how she behaved at the party last night, but that’s just anger, a sign of her growth, not her decline.”

“Growth? Are you fucking crazy? I just told you what she’s using as art materials. And you saw her getup and her behavior at the party last night. You’re going to tell me that this is all a sign of her growth?”

He caught his breath, his rage growing in spite of his attempts at control. “What the fuck is she growing into, can you tell me? I’ll tell you. A flaming, drug-addicted nut case, that’s what. And I think you’re the one that’s crazy. Go fuck yourself!” and he slammed down the phone.

Now, totally alone, he was unable to cope with the enormity of the situation. He was losing her. He was losing Phoebe, he thought, and he couldn’t bear it.

Coldly, because it was necessary, Bill began to dial for an ambulance.

Maybe this was the wrong thing to do, maybe it was a betrava but he simply could not cope.

Bill was not sure of very much anymore, but of two things he was certain, Phoebe was totally wacko, and in spite of it, he was still completely and utterly obsessed with her.

Bill sat at the desk in his law office, his fingers combing compulsively through his hair. Before him sat a styrofoam cup of cold coffee, slowly leaking on the blotter of his Mark Cross desk pad.

Phoebe was gone. And she would be away for a very long time. The psychiatrists at the private hospital in Hartford had assured him that Phoebe had now crossed the line into schizophrenia. The most that could be hoped for was a degree of stabilization, then perhaps some degree of reality through a regimen of drugs that would also, as their side effects, make her uncommunicative and very passive.

And there was the problem of money. Well, not really a problem. since the Van Gelders had cut him off from access to Phoebe’s trust fund by assigning a conservator, he had only his income from the law firm to rely on. Well, he could make do for a while. It would mean cutting back a little, bUt then again, he had developed his client billing and creative bookkeeping to an art form.

His eyes scanned the office, his head hardly turning. The damage done by Elise’s whirlwind outrage had been minimized, the broken antique Imari had been repaired, but their value and beauty greatly diminished, he had replaced the bent golf clubs, his antique handcarved duck decoys had been expertly restored by a master of the art in Maine. It was a crime that Elise had sold off his collections for nothing, for spite, but he’d survive. Even after that debacle, he had been able to recoup, pick up the pieces, put that incident behind him. Well, he could do it again.

Bill’s head snapped up as the intercom startled him out of his reverie.

It was the senior partner, chairman of the executive committee.

“Bill, I’d like you to come to my office right away.”

Bill hung up and pulled out the small vial of cocaine he kept in his watch pocket for these emergencies.

After a couple of lines, he threw some cold water on his face, combed his hair, grabbed his jacket, and rushed out the door and down the hall. Now what? he thought.

Don Reed motioned to a chair as Bill entered the room.

“Bill, there’s a pall hanging over you like a shroud, and it’s affecting the partnership.”

Bill started to speak, but Don motioned him silent.

“Elise Elliot—your ex-wife—has pulled all her business from Cromwell Reed, her considerably lucrative business. This firm has been handling her family’s legal work for generations. And the family of your current—um, what-have-you—well, the Van Gelders have also threatened to pull their considerable business from the firm, again, after several generations of a relationship.” Don paused and leaned his elbows on his desk.

“And Elise’s uncle, Bob Bloogee, and Bloogee Industries, has also, after a longtime relationship, left us. So you can see, Bill, not only are you not bringing in any new business, but you appear to be directly responsible for the loss of millions—millions—of dollars of billings to this partnership each year.”

Bill felt the sweat begin to dampen his armpits.

“Let me be brutally frank,” Don said. “The executive committee has decided to let yoU go. You don’t have a place in the partnership any longer. And we’re hoping that you will do the gentlemanly thing and simply accept the decision.”

Bill felt his chest heave, then he jumped up, the cocaine surging through him, turning his surprise into rage. “The gentlemanly thing?

Accept getting fucked by my partners? Where is a fifty-seven-year-old ex-partner supposed to find work? What am I supposed to do now? Just take it like a gentleman,’ shake hands, and say good-bye?”

This was more than he could bear. Anger rose in him, an irresistible wave. Someone had to be blamed for this, but who? Someone had to be punished. He’d kill this fat bastard. How many years had he listened to his stupid jokes, put up with the scraps from his table?

“Well, fuck you and the other gentlemen.” I’ll sue your ass. You can’t dump me just because I’ve had a few family problems. So you put me on trial for this?”

Bill noticed Don Reed sigh, as if pained. “The SEC has been around, Bill. They’re looking for some information on Morty the Madman stock.

And you know how idealistic young attorneys can be—and how scared.

They’re singing like canaries, and you will most likely be subpoenaed.

Which means that this firm is—I am-in for some very close federal scrutiny.” Don clenched his teeth. “And we don’t like that, Bill. We don’t like that at all.”

Don Reed shifted upright in his chair. “So this isn’t a trial, Bill.

Think of this as more of an execution.

To top it all off, we’ve also discovered your extensive cheating on your client billing sheets. We consider that stealing from the partnership. You can imagine how that last piece of news went over with the executive committee. Married to one of the richest women in the world, and he’s stealing from his partners and clients. You’ve lost your sense of subtlety, Bill, your sense of proportion.”

Don lifted a cigar from the humidor and lit it, while Bill sat watching as if from outside himself.

“So, I wouldn’t talk anymore about suing if I were you,” Don continued.

“In fact, you should consider yourself lucky that you’re not being prosecuted for your crimes. Not yet, anyway.”

“You cocksuckers,” Bill whispered, rose unsteadily, and headed for the door, now eager to get out of the room and the building, his face linen-white.

But he was tired. It’s no use, he thought. I can’t go on. Phoebe, my job, all gone. What am I going to do?

How can I go on without her? He had never felt this way for anyone.

Now he couldn’t imagine what it was like not to want Phoebe. And he couldn’t fight the Van Gelders, the Don Reeds, alone.

Don Reed followed him, his face a mask of malevolent anger. “Please vacate your office immediately. There are two security guards waiting outside to watch you pack your personal belongings only, and a moving man with cartons is in your office right now beginning the packing. ” Bill slammed the door behind him, but it was hardly enough to express the desperation and isolation that had enveloped him. How did this all happen? How did he lose everything? Phoebe, job, money, position—everything? All gone.

Where do I find another wealthy woman, he thought, now that I have notling to offer?

Shark Meet.

At about the same time that Bill Atchison was being ushered out of Cromwell Reed, another partners’ minyan stood in the carpeted corridor outside Gil Griffin’s office. “He’s lost control,” one of the senior partners said, his voice trembling. “He’s lost control.”

”No, he’s just lost it,” said Stuart Swann, very matter-of-fact.

“I’m telling you, the same thing happened with Mitsui, and I made a horse’s ass out of myself,” Dwight McMurdo, another senior partner, asserted. “You’re all overreacting. The man’s a genius, he knows exactly what he’s doing. First he set up the market on Mitsui and sold short. Now he’s got everyone all crazy over Maibeibi. I tell you, he knows what he’s about.” Dwight spoke as if he had the inside track.

“But the price dropped eleven points last night, and then another five this morning, and it’s only a quarter after nine in the morning!” the other partner whined anxiously. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“Do you realize that he has almost seven hundred million dollars of our money tied up in this?” Robert Jamison, the oldest partner in the firm, asked. “And that was at the earlier, higher cost per share.”

His voice and hands shook, but as they often did, it wasn’t clear whether he was more nervous than usual.

“Anyway, where is the fair-haired boy?”

“He might be a bit late today,” Stuart Swann predicted with a smirk.

‘He had a big weekend.”

“He’s never been late before,” cried McMurdo.

“He’s never been in jail before!” said Stuart Swann.

The tabloids were intolerable. They lay crumpled in a pile beside him on the seat of the limousine. He looked up over the driver’s shoulder and clenched his teeth. The traffic was brutal and this man couldn’t drive. He looked down at his red, aching hands. Gil wouldn’t be driving for a while, and not in the Jag. He winced.

Someone had done a terrible thing to his baby. And to him. In fact, a lot of people had done terrible things to him, Mary was only the worst of the betrayers.

His glance fell on the Post headline, and he winced again. TRADER YELLS TRAITOR, BEATS WIFE, it said. There were pictures, too. Mary running from him on the stairs of the museum. Him with his fist cocked, ready to belt her. SOCIETY BASH, read the Daily News, with a close-up of the two of them. But the worst was the wedding picture of her and that ape.

How had they gotten hold of that photograph so quickly when he himself had been so blissfully, so stupidly, unaware of it? How could Mary betray him in such a way, the disgusting, lying bitch? A shudder of revulsion passed over him. Her skin and his. Her breasts against that animal’s chest, her silky hair against his kinky nigger mop. His hands on her, in her. His … God, it sickened him.

He didn’t regret hitting her, not for a moment. In fact, he wished now that he could beat her within an inch of her life. Kill her, even.

The thought cheered him for a moment. His fist smashing that lying mouth, his hands choking the breath out of her body, the whore. No, he didn’t regret hitting her that time, before Japan. Now he wished he’d hit her harder.

But he did regret doing it publicly, making himself a laughingstock.

All of his enemies—Steinberg, Bloogee, even Stuart Swann—would revel in this. They would rise up against him, a horde of smirking, smiling faces.